Court seeks intra party polls record from ECP

LAHORE - The Lahore High Court Tuesday issued notice to Election Commission of Pakistan to present complete record regarding intra party elections of three political parties including Pakistan Muslim League-N, PPP and Jamiat Ulame Islam (F) and adjourned the hearing until July 1.

An official of the ECP told the judge that the above said parties held intra party elections and submitted their certificates before the election commission. The petitioner, however, raised objection over the official’s reply saying that that he did not submit intra party elections’ report which legally was much important. The certificates without record of the intra party elections had no legal value, he said.

On it, Justice Syed Mansoor Ali Shah, who was holding the proceedings, observed that the court could not set aside a certificate in the absence of relevant law or law of evidence. The judge adjourned hearing until July 1.

Advocate Gohar Nawaz Sindhu, senior vice president of PTI Lawyers wing-Punjab had filed the petition and submitted that that the respondent political parties did not hold intra-party elections and elected their heads through bogus polling. He said the parties violated Political Parties Order 2002 by not holding intra-party election.

He prayed to the court to restrain Nawaz Sharif, Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Maulana Fazlur Rehman from heading their respective parties and also barred the ECP from allotting election symbols to the respondents.

An election tribunal Monday adjourned until today (Tuesday) the hearing of NA-122, the constituency from where NA Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq was elected, and asked the counsel of PTI chairman to continue his arguments.

The PTI counsel would resume and complete his arguments on the next hearing after which counsel of Ayaz Sadiq will extend his arguments.

Previously, on May 30, Nadra had submitted a supplementary forensic report of the constituency NA-122 stating that 5898 (96.7 per cent) voters out 6123 could be declared or considered as valid voters which were earlier declared invalid voters by Nadra on the pretext that CNICs of those voters were never issued by the Nadra. After this report, in the view of Nadra only 204 votes could be declared as invalid in the constituency NA-122.

The report stated that Nadra examined sample of counterfoils having invalid identity card numbers and observed that a large number of these were minor mistakes in writing down the number of CNICs and theses trivial mistakes had rendered an otherwise valid CNIC number into an invalid one.

Interestingly, on May 9, Nadra had submitted its full audit report of NA-122 before the tribunal revealing that only 73478 out of total 184151 cast votes in constituency NA-122 had been verified which made that 60 per cent of the polled votes were not recognisable.